In reply to a post by candlerb:

Try booting the PC from an Ubuntu live USB stick and testing from that.

Assuming Windows 10 or later, using the Task Manager to show network throughput whilst downloading the 1GB file from Thinkbroadband (or something of at least this size from Microsoft, Google etc) is worthwhile.

Some modern laptops seem to have something against booting from USB

Edited by jchamier (Mon 02-Jan-23 16:48:50)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Some modern laptops seem to have something against booting from USB

I've had at least one where the BIOS had to be adjusted to make booting from USB the first choice (otherwise it booted from HDD even if a USB was inserted).

In reply to a post by candlerb:

180 Mbps "down" meaning from the Pi to the PC? Sounds like the PC has some sort of anti-virus / content scanner active.

Such tools are generally quite happy to let viruses escape to other machines

Try booting the PC from an Ubuntu live USB stick and testing from that.

Must be something to do with that particular PC as another laptop, wired into the same switch, gets download speeds of 800Mbps+

So preliminary tests with the Tenda are not good

New set up is; Hey! 900/900 connection, Archer C7 router connected to the ONT and Tenda MW12 MESH connected to the C7

Laptop wired into C7 gives a speed test of 690Mbps [ not overly impressive considering it's meant to be 900Mbps ]
Laptop wired into main MW12 node gives a speed test of 680Mbps [ excellent considering the above ]
Laptop wired into furthest MW12 node give a speed test of 350Mbps [ disappointing - only 100Mbps faster than when it was connected to a 400Mbps ISP connection ]
All wired devices connected to the furthest MW12 node, again, get about 340/350Mbps

Wireless devices connected to the MW12 MESH give a speed test of 85+Mbps [ this is more than ample for what the devices are used for ]

So, overall, a bit disappointing that the shortest wired connection is nowhere near the full 900Mbps (is it possible this is due to the router being used ?) but more concerning is the speeds got from the furthest MW12 node.

Clearly, it's not a limitation on the the node itself (given the main node right next to the router gets pretty much the same speed as the router does) but more than likely a combination of the distance and WiFi 5.

Anyone got any ideas ?

What can't you acheive with 340mbps?

In reply to a post by broadband66:

What can't you acheive with 340mbps?

That's a good point.

It's more a case of wondering why it's only getting 340Mbps ? Or maybe the issue, now, is why the router is only getting 690Mbps on a 900Mbps connection ?

Welcome to the world of LAN optimisation.

First thing to do is rule out your laptop: try booting it with an Ubuntu live USB stick (to rule out Windows, anti-virus and NIC driver issues) and doing the test again. If it's a very old laptop, try a newer one.

Then you can try to rule out the router: you can try disconnecting the router and terminating the PPPoE connection directly on the laptop (create a PPPoE virtual interface).

However, I think things are pointing at the router right now.

The Archer C7 is discontinued. AFAICS it has a QCA9558 with a single core at 720MHz, which sounds pretty underpowered for a gigabit to me. (My old router is a Mikrotik hEX PoE which has a QCA9557 @ 800MHz; with IPv4 and FastTrack optimisations it can almost fill a gigabit, but with IPv6 only about 300Mbps)

You could try running OpenWrt on it, in case it's more efficient than the official firmware:
https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer_c7

Very odd. When I said much the same thing in another post you disagreed with me. Though I was at least arguing that a connection speed faster than the internet connection is rarely useful. So what do you really think?

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Welcome to the world of LAN optimisation.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Then you can try to rule out the router: you can try disconnecting the router and terminating the PPPoE connection directly on the laptop (create a PPPoE virtual interface).

However, I think things are pointing at the router right now.

The first bit sounds interesting but I think you're right on the 2nd bit

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The Archer C7 is discontinued. AFAICS it has a QCA9558 with a single core at 720MHz, which sounds pretty underpowered for a gigabit to me. (My old router is a Mikrotik hEX PoE which has a QCA9557 @ 800MHz; with IPv4 and FastTrack optimisations it can almost fill a gigabit, but with IPv6 only about 300Mbps)

I assume https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-OneMeshTM-HomeShiel... would be a more than adequate replacement (assuming I don't intend to use it's WiFi capabilities)

In reply to a post by AdamBrunt:

I assume https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-OneMeshTM-HomeShiel... would be a more than adequate replacement (assuming I don't intend to use it's WiFi capabilities)

The only specification I can find for this model is "dual core CPU" (without saying what sort of cores, or what clock frequency). All I can say is it'll probably be better than what you have.

Since you don't need the wifi, this does open more options for routers. One is to build your own using a small PC with a two NICs and something like pfSense. Another is a dedicated router without wireless.

I use a Mikrotik RB4011 which is much more expensive than your proposed TP-Link, but has a quad-core 1.4GHz ARM32 processor. Eats a gigabit in its sleep

The newer RB5009 is more powerful again, although you are forced to use RouterOS v7 (which is almost certainly fine for home use now. It was a rewrite-from-scratch and there were early stability problems)